Posted on 01/23/2006 6:14:41 AM PST by Abathar
HEFEI, 01/21 - A full superconducting experimental Tokamak fusion device, which aims to generate infinite, clean nuclear-fusion-based energy, will be built in March or April in Hefei, capital city of east China`s Anhui Province.
Experiments with the advanced new device will start in July or August. If the experiments prove successful, China will become the first country in the world to build a full superconducting experimental Tokamak fusion device, nicknamed "artificial sun", experts here said.
The project, dubbed EAST (experimental advanced superconducting Tokamak), is being undertaken by the Hefei-based Institute of Plasma Physics under the Chinese Academy of Sciences. It will require a total investment of nearly 300 million yuan (37 million U.S. dollars), only one fifteenth to one twentieth the cost of similar devices being developed in the other parts of the world.
The new device will be an upgrade of China`s first superconducting Tokamak device, dubbed HT-7, which was also built by the plasma physics institute, in partnership with Russia, in the early 1990s. HT-7 made China the fourth country in the world, after Russia, France and Japan, to have such a device.
"The EAST project research results will be significant for the International Thermonuclear Experiment Reactor, or ITER, in terms of basic research both in engineering technology and physics," said Wan Yuanxi, who is in charge of the project.
Wan said ITER will also be a full superconducting experimental Tokamak fusion device with an advanced configuration, but much larger than EAST.
The program, still in its initial stages, involves Russia, Japan, the United States, the European Union, China and the Republic of Korea.
Controlled nuclear fusion is seen as an efficient way for people to generate infinite, clean energy to offset the dearth of fossil fuels such as oil and coal.
Scientists believe that deuterium can be extracted from the sea and an enormous amount of energy can be obtained from a deuterium-tritium fusion reaction under huge temperatures of 100 million degrees Celsius. After nuclear fusion, the deuterium extracted from one liter of sea water will produce energy equivalent to 300 liters of gasoline.
If a device is developed that can withstand temperatures as high as 100 million Celsius degrees and control a deuterium-tritium reaction, it will be as though an "artificial sun" had been created able to supply infinite, clean energy for human beings.
Columbus's trip was not an expensive trip, chump change to Ferdinand and Isabella. Had Columbus been like NASA we'd still be circling the Azores in fiendishly expensive ships that were barely seaworthy. And the fiendishness of expense would mean that there were thousands of specialities and industries all lobbying the imperial spanish court to keep things just the way they were accustomed to, at least until Spain went bankrupt.
Sorry I drifted into the Space Shuttle thread ... the logic still applies to tokamaks.
A Tokamak is a toroidal fusion reactor. Doesn't matter what the magnets are made of to float the plasma. The only difference is efficiency. The fact that they don't mention the US is purely to imply that we are laggards, when there was a privately funded and functioning Tokamak under the physics building in my undergraduate college.
Yeah, but that's STILL relatively clean compared to the amount of radioactives generated by the fission process. Not that that amount of radioactivity (from fission) is an insurmountable problem--I'm all for starting a breeder/burner fission energy cycle ASAP.
LOL!!! Just about what I pictured when I read the article...
You are familiar with the cheap "made in China" toys, aren't you?
yep, you get what you pay for.
Uh, U.S. has build Tokamak reactors for a while now, I took my intro quantum physics class in the same building that house one of the U.S. Tokamak on the Washington University in St. Louis campus, walked by it everyday :).
Using super-conducting magnet is an evolutionary design improvement, hardly a break-through.
The thing is - the article's title is mis-leading, there is nothing particularly "first" about this, it's just part of on-going basic research in high energy physics, similar work is also being done in Europe, Japan, Russia, and North America.
To be fair, if you read the article, the Chinese scientist aren't claiming this as a significant first in anything either (except they are building it dirt cheap compare to building one in the U.S.), or that they have the whole fusion (e.g. artificial sun) thing figured out. They are only re-stating the same holy grail (unlimited clean and cheap energy from hydrogen) that everyone's been chasing for the last half century.
Oh yeah, it is part of project 863 general science and technology research. Which thus far hasn't produced anything terribly impressive - not unlike similar big govenrment funded money hole / big science project in the west.
http://www.863.org.cn/english/annual_report/annual_repor_2000/als2000_09.html
I think we want them to fail, and in a spectacular and deadly way. I would rather hope they succeed because if China becomes energy self sufficient then world oil prices will fall and gas will become cheaper. There is also a tech sharing network with alot of scientist around the world for which some of the research data will get out. Slowly, the advance of knowledge will occur with or without the Communist government's permission, and the day of the combustion engine will end. I will thank God if I am alive to see it.
Tritium breeding, extraction, and control
Must have lithium in some form for tritium breeding
http://64.233.179.104/search?q=cache:HRUOWUttxAMJ:www.fusion.ucla.edu/abdou/abdou%2520presentations/2005/Abdou-9th-ICCoEE-PlenaryLong.ppt+vanadium+lithium+nuclear+reactor&hl=en
You know a lot more than I do about this. At least there is international cooperation and the future looks promising.
nothing new here...
mankind has still to figure out how to add more fuel to the process once it is started, harvest the energy that is created and keep things from melting down once you keep the fusion fire burning. The guys from iter caim it will take another 60 years of research until the useable process. Maybe the Iran conflict helps them thinking - but I suppose not.
Are you sure about that? Been along time since I read it (mid '80s), but IEEE seemed to think that the high level waste from D/T fusion would be about same as fission plus you have problem that very expensive structures (eg magnets) would be neutron damaged and degraded.
"Cold Fusion"
Ha!
Oh ... wait ....
Trouble wih that link is it's hard to tell fact from speculation. He kind of mixes the two.
Actually the project has.
One is the SHA-1 encryption algorithm (used in many communications, credit card, etc. processing) Check out SHA-1 encryption being broken by a professor in Shandong province:
http://en.wikinews.org/wiki/Chinese_researchers_crack_major_U.S._government_algorithm_used_in_digital_signatures
http://theory.csail.mit.edu/~yiqun/shanote.pdf
There is a paper out there where the researchers showed in the paper, step by step algorithmic way to break the encryption (actually did it by hand). This has gotten the attention of the top cryptologist everywhere.
This is just one project they have made PUBLIC.
brilliant marketing.
The hippie crowd will not really be able to confuse nuclear fussion with fission reactors.
Its a warm and fuzzy "sun" reactor.
duplicate:
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1563242/posts
original by same author
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